20.6.17

US Reacts Forcefully to Russian Threat to Treat US Planes in Syria as 'Targets'

FILE - A U.S. Navy F/A-18E
Super Hornet launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS
Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Sea, June 28, 2016.

WHITE HOUSE —
The United States has responded forcefully to Russia’s threat to
treat U.S.-led coalition planes in the skies over Syria as targets, as
tensions escalate in the 6-year Syrian conflict.
“We’re going to do what we can to protect our interests,” White House
spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters Monday, defending the decision to
shoot down a Syrian SU-22 jet that had bombed coalition partnered forces
near the Syrian town of Tabqah.
“The Syrian regime … needs to understand that we will keep the right
of self-defense of coalition forces aligned against ISIS,” he said. The
spokesman made clear, however, that the United States would continue to
“work with partners” to counter the threat of the Islamic State in
Syria.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called the shoot down
an “act of aggression.” A ministry statement issued in Moscow warned
that coalition planes would be viewed as targets, and said a hotline for
preventing accidental military engagement would be shut off.
Spicer said Monday that Washington would work to keep lines of
communication open to, in his words, “de-conflict potential issues.”
Earlier, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, said officials are trying to re-establish the communications
link to prevent potentially deadly accidents, and that the
de-confliction efforts have worked well in the past.

“The Russian Federation has indicated that their purpose in Syria,
like ours, is to defeat ISIS," Dunford told reporters. "And we’ll see if
that’s true here in the coming hours, because all of our operations in
and around Raqqa and southern Syria are designed specifically to get
after ISIS.
“We have agreed in the past, that is we and the Russian Federation
Pro-Regime Forces, that operations that the coalition were conducting in
Syria were effectively degrading ISIS capability, and will work to
restore that de-confliction chain in the next few hours,” Dunford said.

The Russian military alleged that in Sunday’s incident, "the command of
the coalition forces did not use the established communication channel
for preventing incidents in Syrian airspace."
Frants Klintsevich, deputy head of the defense committee in Russia’s
upper house of parliament, said the defense ministry statement does not
mean there will be war with the U.S. in Syria, but rather that Moscow
will not accept attacks on its Syrian allies.
Earlier, Syrian forces attacked coalition fighters in Ja'Din,
wounding a number of fighters and driving them from the town. Coalition
aircraft stopped the pro-regime forces from advancing on Ja'Din.
The coalition said it contacted Russian commanders to set up a "de-confliction line" to prevent the fighting from worsening.
The dispute over the Syrian attack on the U.S.-backed fighters and
the American response came as Iran launched ballistic missiles at
Islamic State strongholds in eastern Syria in retaliation for a pair of
attacks by extremists in Tehran earlier this month that killed 17
people.